Kluane Country Travel Guide

is the pocket of southwest Yukon on and around a scenically stunning 491-kilometre stretch of the Alaska Hwy from Whitehorse to Beaver Creek at the border with Alaska. Kluane comes from the Southern Tutchone aboriginal word meaning a "place of many fish" after the area's teeming waters, and of Kluane Lake in particular, the Yukon's highest and largest stretch of water. These days, though, the name's associated more with the all-but-impenetrable wilderness of Canada's largest mountain park, the Kluane National Park - a region that contains the country's highest mountains, the most extensive non-polar ice fields in the world, and the greatest diversity of plant and animal species in the far north. The park's main centre is Haines Junction at the intersection of the Alaska Hwy and the Haines Road. Although motels and campsites regularly dot the Alaska Hwy, the only other settlements of any size are Destruction Bay and Burwash Landing on Kluane Lake. Gray Line's Alaskon Express and Alaska Direct buses ply the length of the Alaska Hwy, which is also very popular with hitchhikers.